The close relationship between the Reconstructionist movement and Jewish Voice for Peace extremists.
Moshe Phillips
The murder in Washington, D.C., of Israeli embassy staff members Yaron Lischinsky, 30, and Sarah Milgrim, 26, last month by an anti-Israel extremist has drawn statements from American rabbis across the spectrum of political and religious thought. Yet one response stands out for its disturbing nature.
Rabbi Brant Rosen of Chicago, co-founder of the Rabbinical Council of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and spiritual leader of Tzedek Chicago, responded by stating: “These were two Israeli embassy workers, so they were representatives of a country that is engaged in a genocide,” referring to Palestinian Arab deaths amid a war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza that followed the terrorist massacre of 1,200 people in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and the kidnapping of some 250 others.
Tzedek Chicago, founded in 2015, describes itself as “an anti-Zionist Jewish congregation based on core values of justice, equity and solidarity.” In other words, Rosen positions himself well outside the mainstream of American Jewish life.
JVP does not support a two-state solution. JVP calls for an end to the State of Israel as we now know it.
JVP’s rabbinical council has only 41 members—out of an estimated 4,000 to 5,000 rabbis in the United States, not including ordained rabbis working outside synagogues and campus organizations. Yet despite their small numbers, JVP rabbis have gained an outsized influence in discourse since Oct. 7. By contrast, the Coalition for Jewish Values says its “Rabbinic Circle is composed of over 2,500 traditional Orthodox rabbis.”
If the American Jewish community holds that some individuals and organizations cross lines into what can generously be called renegade territory, then JVP surely qualifies.
What’s more troubling is that the Reconstructionist movement, which is the home of many JVP leaders, has so far failed to disassociate itself from these figures. This inaction should prompt the Reform and Conservative movements to re-examine their relationships with Reconstructionist institutions. Yet this reckoning has not occurred.
Let’s examine the close, even affirming, relationship between the Reconstructionist movement and JVP extremists.
Brant Rosen, Linda Holtzman and Brian Walt—all members of the JVP Rabbinical Council—are graduates of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College (RRC) and have held or continue to hold high-profile roles within major Reconstructionist organizations. All three are featured on ReconstructingJudaism.org, the movement’s official website.
Another affiliated site, Ritualwell.org, serves as a liturgical resource for the movement. Rosen’s “A Jewish Prayer for Nakba Day” is published on the site and includes the phrase “from the river to the sea”—a slogan that is widely recognized as rejecting Israel’s existence. Walt’s bio on ReconstructingJudaism.org notes explicitly that he is a member of JVP’s Rabbinical Council.
According to ReconstructingJudaism.org, Holtzman serves as an RRC professor and director of student life (though it is unclear how current the listing is), despite her long-standing involvement with JVP. Walt was even chosen to present at the Reconstructionist Israel Convening this past December in a session titled “Reflecting on Israel, despite being a senior JVP leader.”
Rosen’s nearly 2,600-word screed, titled “Why I’ve Broken From Zionism,” remains publicly available on ReconstructingJudaism.org. In it, he disavows any connection to the Zionist movement.
This is not a case of guilt by association.
The Reconstructionist movement offers JVP-affiliated rabbis a degree of legitimacy that amounts to tacit approval of their anti-Zionist extremism. This stands in stark contrast to broader American Jewish opinions. As a Gallup staffer noted in 2019, “95% of Jews have favorable views of Israel.”
In early May, Rabbi Deborah Waxman, head of the two most prominent Reconstructionist institutions, gave a major interview upon announcing her retirement. In it, she stated: “The Reconstructionist movement has long supported a two-state solution, and many of our leaders have advocated for Palestinian national aspirations even when it came at a personal cost.”
But how can Waxman’s statements be taken seriously when key movement figures contradict them so openly?
Rosen is a past president of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association. Holtzman currently serves on its board. Walt wrote back in 2012 in a nearly 6,700-word essay: “The daily reality in Israel violated each of these core values. And I could no longer be a Zionist.”
Walt is also currently listed as a member of the J Street Rabbinic and Cantorial Cabinet on its website. And he is not alone in belonging to both J Street’s rabbinic body and JVP’s. Mordechai Liebling, one-time executive director of Jewish Reconstructionist Federation, is another, as are Alan LaPayover, Rebecca Alpert and others.
Both J Street and the Reconstructionists claim to be for a two-state solution, but how do they reconcile the involvement in their organizations of JVP’s anti-Israel rabbis?
It’s easy to see just how radical JVP really is with even a very quick review of their website, where they call for the removal of Jews from Israel. The section reads: “We imagine Arab, Middle Eastern and Southwest Asian/North African Jews having ethical and safe access to return to their original homelands.”
The Reconstructionist movement has had more than a decade to address this issue and has consistently failed to act. It has not distanced itself from its most radical figures, nor has it publicly disavowed the positions of JVP’s rabbinical leadership.
It’s time for American Jews to seriously re-evaluate the place the Reconstructionist movement occupies in the larger communal tent.
@Donaldo
No, they have them. They believe the blood libel that Israel has turned into Nazi Germany in their name. Even survivors. Remember Israel Shahak?
As did I in the ’80s, I’m ashamed to say. Half my family was murdered including my grandparents and great grandparents on one side and my father was enslaved. His first cousin survived Auschwitz. They alone, survived. And then escaped the Communists. Though my father was falsely imprisoned and tortured by them first for a year.
I note, with a touch of irony, that dedicated Marxists are only dedicated with words. If not, I would recommend that people like Rabbi Rosen (and his congregation) take a trip to Gaza and help out their heroes by carrying a gun to be used against the IDF. Good luck on that one…
Suffice it to say that I find Marxists repulsive because of their innate – and very obvious – sleaze, Jew or non-Jew.
I am saddened and frustrated by Jews in the US (not the Orthodox Jews) but all other Jewish denominations not just the Reconstructionist Jews. Jewish progressives have a real problem. Their home has always been in the democrat party.
I am a red diaper baby myself. My parents have never shifted in believing that Communism is the best political/economic system even though they are both in their 90’s. You cannot discuss even real events in history with them, they always feel they know better than everyone else. When I mentioned something about the Holodomor in Ukraine, my mother said, “That never happened, it was just anti-Soviet propaganda.”
Most Jews are more moderate than my parents, however, the progressive movement is now Marxist. So have the Jews who are not Marxists left the democrat party?
I don’t think so. But I cannot imagine how they justify the reality that Islam is in the process of conquering the world as a result of progressives and “progressive” policies in the western countries. Or maybe they are blind to what is happening around the world.
Where do they stand on this? To them, Islam is simply a religion just like judaism. For them to recognize that jihadi Muslims are a death cult committing genocide on Jews would mean they would be anti-Muslim, something unacceptable to progressives.
I don’t know how they remain in the democrat party after the 7th of October, with the democrat party supporting all the pro-Palestinian protests.
They have lost their connection to Israel, many have lost their connection to God and view their Jewish sense of purpose is in social justice programs, e.g. helping Afghan immigrants re-settle in upper middle class suburbs around Boston.
They save their sense of outrage to be used against Israel and have bought the propaganda of the pro-Palestinian movement.
It is painful for me to see that the splintering of the Jewish community is being aided and abetted by the very party they have identified with all their lives. The normalization of Jew hatred started under Obama, who started J street. That must have been a planned effort. As Professor Gil-White says, if elites want to enslave everyone, they will always start with the Jews.
If they cannot get rid of Jews directly, they will try to crush Jewish unity by pitting the progressive Jews against the conservative or Trump supporting Jews.
Is there any solution to this disunity?
“an anti-Zionist Jewish congregation based on core values of justice, equity and solidarity.”
What twaddle. The left knows they can never win against the west in a shooting war, so they have undermined the education system – which BTW, is till using educational techniques from the stone age.
Time to fire all the educators and make them apply for their jobs again. Marxists and libtards need not apply.
As for jewish apologists, one has to assume they had no relatives in the ovens in German WW2, as designed by the Mufti of Palestine.
It’s not genocide, if all of those being killed are enemy combatants. And since Hamas enjoys a 93% support rate in Gaza, there are nothing but enemy combatants there. Why, they even let Hamas hide in all their institutions, schools, hospitals, etc.
In fact, the three books that convinced me of the Fakestinian narrative in 1978 were by Jewish leftists.
“The Jewish Question, a Marxist interpretation” by Abram Leon (A jewish Trot who was murdered in the Shoah. He had been arrested by the Nazis when he was proselytzing German soldiers like a Bolshevik in 1919.)
“Zionism in the Age of Dictators” by Lenni Brenner (another Trot)
“The Fateful Triangle: Israel, the United States, and the Palestinians” by Noam Chomsky (Left Anarchist)
I could have sworn it was Israel, the United States, and South Africa, and a co-author Edward Hermann but that’s what came up just now.
My high school history teacher was a Maoist and our main text for U.S. history was “A People’s history of the United States” by Howard Zinn (Stalinist)
And for “Modern China” – ” Red Star Over China” by Edgar Snow (Mao groupie)
This was when Hua was in power right after Mao died and before the gang of four trial, the rise of Teng (often spelled Deng but pronounced “Dung” Shao Ping, and the “new” China.
My indoctrination began in high school.
I argued with him at first in class but he had all these glossy texbooks by famous professors from all over the world so who was I to argue.
Did you know that the Cultural Revolution was the most peaceful (reminds me of “mostly peaceful”) democratic, no, ultra- (that means super-duper) democratic revolution in world history? Bet yu didn’t. I didn’t either.
Don’t anymore.
On steroids. Jeez. Far back as 1975 or 6, the year of the Bicentennial. Everybody thought the far left was dormant. No. They were entrenching themselves in the schools.
The Two married Marxist leaders of the Weather Underground Terrorist Group who got off on a technicality and in whose living room, Obama’s political career was launched. Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn
He went into Early Childhood Education as an academic. There was speculation he ghost wrote Obama’s memoir. I could have sworn they founded the Tide Foundation but apparently not. I looked in “Discover the Networks”. Nada. Somebody else.
“AI overview
Bill Ayers was a retired distinguished professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He has a long and distinguished career in education, including early childhood education. He began his teaching career in primary education at the Children’s Community School, a Summerhill-method school. He also holds multiple degrees in education, including an M.Ed. in Early Childhood Education from Bank Street College. ”
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And unless I’m mistaken, I think it was Todd Gitlin in his landmark history of S.D.S. (Students for a Democratic Society) (Obama went to an SDS affiliated school in Hawaii) pointed out that most of the leaders of the New Left were red diaper babies, children of the Communist Party USA members who had been suppressed during the McCarthy Era, such as the late and lamented David Horowitz of Front Page Magazine and the Editor in Chief of Ramparts Magazine in the ’60s, the premier New Left publication. He was also, at one point, Bertrand Russell’s assistant which is very interesting, as an unrelated side note.
I was one of the lucky ones. I had reasoned myself in, in the first place, and I reasoned myself out when it clearly made no sense to me, anymore.
“You can’t reason someone out of a position they weren’t reasoned into.” – Jonathan Swift
I knew Marxists who justified 9/11 like that, at the time. The more or less simultaneous Oslo Terror War, my discovery of Palestinian Media Watch, snd the Defence/Security page of Arutz Sheva and maybe CAMERA, Honest Reporting.com, and MEMRI transformed my thinking about Israel and the Pals, but for my view of the left, itself, I think that may have been the very last straw for me.